Do it yourself

Urbanization is intrinsic to development and often serves as a major driver of economic growth. As India reaches tipping point of transitioning from a mostly rural to an urban society, the focus must be on ensuring the best opportunities for economic growth for all sections of the society. — Dr. Rajiv Kumar, Former Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog In October 2020, the NITI Aayog formed an Advisory Committee on  ‘Reforms in Urban Planning Capacity in India’ , to find ways to face the multiple challenges being faced in the cities and India’s commitments towards global agendas. After extensive deliberation with domain experts and think tanks, the Committee presented its report in September 2021. The highlights of the report are summarized below. ·           India is the second largest urban system  in the world with almost 11% of the total global urban population living in Indian cities. In absolute numbers, the urban population in India is m...

    All citizens of India are very well aware that these are not some random pictures of India’s major metro cities. These represent regular life of the citizens of these cities. Water shortage, water logging, traffic jams, unhygienic colonies inhabited by poor, unplanned and illegal constructions, encroachment of public spaces, dangerously hanging electric supply wires, narrow lanes where fire tenders cannot reach in case of fire accident, stray animals posing risk of peoples’ life, are some of the common characteristics of Indian urbanization. Numerous tier 2 towns and cities in India carry distinguished history, culture and traditions within themselves. However mostly unplanned and unmindful growth has made these cities look alike. Today one would struggle to distinguish Kashi, Patna, Bareilly, Moradabad, Aligarh, Agra, Panipat, Hissar, Jhansi, Praygraj (Allahabad) from each other. They all are equally cacophonous, raging, dirty, ill, concretized and mostly unlivable. The r...